The Newcastle Jets women are facing a backlog of matches next month after their round-eight clash with Brisbane, scheduled for Sunday in Queensland, was postponed on Friday.
The match postponement, which was the third for the Jets women's side out of their past four matches, was due to several Roar players contracting COVID as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the A-League competitions.
It means the Jets now have three games to catch up - they also had round-five and six matches with Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory respectively postponed - before their final regular-season outing on March 4.
The Victory match, originally scheduled for January 7, was postponed after more than half of the Jets playing squad contracted COVID.
They played out a 1-1 draw with Perth at No.2 Sportsground last Sunday in their first outing in over three weeks and Jets coach Ash Wilson said, while not ideal, the welfare of players in A-League Women was "paramount".
"It is what it is," Wilson said on Friday.
"You can't get too frustrated about it at this point in time, you kind of just have to roll with it because we've been in the situation and, if Brisbane are that impacted, their players' health and welfare is the most important part.
"If postponing it this week means they can get their health back on track and you can ensure that the quality of games are at the top level because they've been able to recover then that's the main thing.
"Is it frustrating because you've got to the end of the week and you're prepared. But, I can't do anything about it. The players can't do anything about it, so there's no point in getting worked up about something that we can't change."
The Jets were set to fly to Brisbane on Saturday after training in the morning.
Wilson said the extra week gave players such as midfielder Lucy Johnson, who has been nursing a quadriceps complaint from the Perth match and was unlikely to travel to Brisbane, time to recover.
Jets left-back Gema Simon is yet to play a game this season due a calf complaint but returned to full training during the week.
Exciting Norwegian attacker Marie Dolvik Markussen did not play against Perth and had been eased back into training this week after she came out of COVID isolation last Sunday. Jets centre-back Hannah Brewer only came out of isolation on Thursday.
"We've got most of the players back," Wilson said. "Lucy is probably the only one who was under a bit of a cloud this weekend. This gives her a bit of extra time to come back to be eligible for selection.
"It allows people like Marie, Hannah and Gem to possibly get some more minutes in an intra-club game tomorrow then we'll look at having a good training week to make sure maybe we can get more minutes under their belt next week as well.
"You can look at it two ways and, if I'm trying to take some positives out it, that's probably it."
The fifth-placed Jets, who have eight points from five games, are scheduled to host ninth-placed Canberra (two points) in a club double-header at McDonald Jones Stadium Sunday week. The Jets men play Adelaide United that day in what will be their first game since December 19 due to their own string of match postponements.
